When a brand new sales person starts, what is most important to teach first? My definition of “green” is that they have never worked in senior housing before. “Part-green” means they have some background in senior housing like working in the homecare industry. I love coaching “green” and “part-green” senior living sales people.

So what do you teach a “green” sales person in the first couple of weeks?

Is it shadowing an existing sales person? You may or may not be lucky enough to have a quality person they can shadow. It can be very helpful, but it can also get a little boring for the trainee. If this is your whole training program, then you are missing the boat of opportunity.

Do you just throw them in to sink or swim immediately? This might not be the brightest idea. They don’t understand the business and what you offer yet. Leads are money, so are you willing to just blow off some potentially hot leads, because a “green” person does not know how they should be managed properly? Some smaller retirement communities have no choice, because they only have one marketer.

Or do you send them out to study the competition? This can be very important in the first couple weeks of training and allows them to compare senior housing communities like the prospects would. They can start to articulate the strengths and weaknesses of their own community versus the retirement community down the street.

How about a dedicated all day training? You could spend a whole day with an interactive program that explains how the prospect really thinks, what to do when the prospect arrives at your community, how to ask discovery questions without interrogating someone, the steps on giving a “wow” tour, helping the prospect connect that your community is the answer to their problem and how to complete the interaction at the end — with determining the next step(s). This is how I started a “green” person two weeks ago.

What has worked and not worked for you – training “green” sales people? Next week I will share what techniques I use training “green” sales people and why…

Please comment to join the conversation and interact with other senior living professionals on what is currently being effective to increase occupancy on a nationwide basis.

Are you doing a senior housing sales book review each week? If not, you should be. If a sales person is not growing then they are moving backward. Sales people can get in rut and become complacent. They can claim that the lack of sales is from the economy or houses not selling. Well, I am telling you that none of that matters. It’s the attitude of the senior living sales person, which determines the sales growth.

Book reviews do several things: First it creates collaboration among colleagues on a new topic. Plus it has a sales person revisit their own techniques to see if there is room for improvement. A new word or sentence said at the right time during a tour can spur a prospective senior resident to say yes to a move instead of thinking about it. Thirdly, the stronger performers can help teach the new or weaker team members.

Now, let’s talk about the homework. When a sales person is working at a million miles an hour pace, they don’t have time to be introspective about anything. They barely have time to eat lunch. Homework – happens at home – where he or she is away from the busy work place and they have time to absorb new material. Reflection on positive outcomes for work – at home – can help a sales person become more effective.

Senior living sales people want to perform well. Help them by offering a weekly book review – one chapter of homework a week…

Please comment to join the conversation and interact with other senior living professionals on what is currently being effective to increase occupancy on a nationwide basis.

It only takes 15 minutes or less per day to engage in social media! Has your retirement community entered the twenty first century with social media yet?

Some of the larger senior housing organizations have wonderful social media programs. Sunrise Senior Living posts great blog content multiple times a week. Emeritus sends out engaging monthly email blasts. Other organizations with a nationwide presence have a staff who are dedicated to social media.

What do you do if you are a stand along retirement community or only have a handful of senior living communities in your portfolio? You can still do social media for 15 minutes a day. Seriously – I am doing it at two Continuing Care Retirement Communities (CCRCs) in Southern California.

First, you can either set up some social media yourself or have it professionally done for about $1000 per community. I had mine set up professionally. Then I trained one person at each CCRC to add content. At first it took them some time to get into the swing of it, but now they can create three or four posts at time and then schedule one post to be released online at a time – one per day using Hootsuite.

We post – fun stuff the residents are going to do, show pictures of what the residents or employees have done and repost interesting articles that seniors would like. The 15 minutes timeframe per day includes taking pictures of some of the resident activities, a plate of food or searching for a image on line to share. And yes, we have signed photo releases… Post your upcoming marketing events and engage with prospective residents.

You can pay extra money for followers, but we have let it grow organically. Employees, residents and family members are getting engaged and we even do the Fan of the Week on Facebook. Freedom Village and The Village each have Facebook accounts, Twitter, Google + and Pinterest.

As local seniors pick one of our CCRCs, the Boomer children that live out of state can see and connect with their parent’s selection through social media – this has had a positive impact on sales. Our most popular posts are residents and employees pictures that go viral.

How is your social media going and has it created or confirmed any move-ins for you yet?

Please comment to join the conversation and interact with other senior living professionals on what is currently being effective to increase occupancy on a nationwide basis.